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THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION ECONOMICS AND BUILDING VOL.2 NO.1   i 

EDITORIAL 

 

Adlai Stephenson was fond of saying that “An editor is someone who separates the wheat from 

the chaff and then prints the chaff.” While this was originally aimed at newspaper editors, it is 

sometimes extended to include editors at large. We have gone to great lengths to avoid the pos-

sibility that it will include us as well, by securing the services of an editorial board comprising 

some of the leading academics of today and tomorrow, an international panel representing nine 

different countries and the major branches of our discipline. Together with the staff of UTS they 

have reviewed every paper offered to us, a large number of contributions on a wide range of 

subjects. They have recommended the best and suggested ways in which they could be further 

improved. 

Like the editorial board, the contributors represent the truly international nature of our disci-

pline and the contributions cover an even wider range of countries and topics than it has been 

possible to include in this issue. A journal can probably survive well without editors and refe-

rees, but not without good authors, and we have been lucky in terms of both quality and diversity 

of interests. We hope that we will continue to enjoy their support and that their example will in-

spire others to share their research with us. 

We trust that you will find the papers selected for inclusion in this issue of interest, and we think 

they make, collectively, a worthy addition to the body of knowledge related to construction eco-

nomics and building; in other words, pure ‘wheat’ with no ‘chaff’. 

The topic areas covered in the selected papers are varied, and range from a discussion of the 

experiences of a group of academics using a problem-based learning approach to teaching con-

struction to some detailed statistical analysis and modelling of the impact of contractor per-

formance on levels of client satisfaction. The end result is a collection of papers that address a 

number of fundamental concerns that are influencing many aspects of our work in the realisa-

tion of construction projects worldwide in the early part of the new millennium including health 

and safety (a prime concern in the recent UK report, Accelerating Change), expansion into glob-
alised markets, the bundling of goods and services in the construction industry, the balancing of 

work and family, and some more sternly practical considerations such as the use of capital 

budgeting techniques and the criteria used in selecting project procurement systems. 

Our thanks must go to a number of people: the Editorial Board plus the other referees (all on 

the staff at UTS) who donated their time and expertise, the authors who accepted our decisions 

and suggestions with good grace, and Sally Beech, who has done a marvellous job in putting the 

final journal together. 

We look forward to our readers’ response to this issue and to completing our commission by 

producing, in due course, the second issue for 2002. 

 

Goran Runeson 

Rick Best 

July 2001